


Sky full of song

by ASheepsLife



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Dancing, Gen, Post-Canon, Welcome folks to the second instalment of Sheep's Amazingly Self-indulgent One-shots, and you can't stop me, it is my belief that the Gang gets together to hang out on the reg, this time we're focussing on Anna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28463202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ASheepsLife/pseuds/ASheepsLife
Summary: In which our favourite spies meet up in Setauket and we don't question if this is feasible or not.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12





	Sky full of song

**Author's Note:**

> I also don't know where this came from; I just wanted to spend a little time with Anna after the war. Riding the tail-end of that holiday spirit. Maybe some day I'll expand on this concept of the gang getting together and catching up - I just love it a lot, ok? For now, have this little snapshot.
> 
> Title is from Florence and the Machine - although this time the song has absolutely nothing to do with the fic, I just needed a title.

Coming up to the tavern’s entrance, Anna paused, casting her eyes over the town and out towards the water, already cloaked in the early darkness. Yes, the crisp air definitely promised snow. As she turned to enter, her ears picked up a fiddle sounding a merry tune nearby. She could hear it faintly even after she closed the door behind her.

It appeared she was the first to arrive today, the ground floor of the tavern empty for their gathering. Of a mind to warm herself, Anna went through to the main room with its fireplace, the fire within banked in anticipation of their arrival. Shedding her cloak, she crouched down and added enough wood from the stack to get it properly going again, then rose. Even though it was no longer possible to hear the fiddle, certainly not over the crackling of the fire, its voice still resonated with her.

Closing her eyes, the warmth of the flames on her face, she let the single strain of music swell in her mind until a whole orchestra filled her ears, as grand as any she’d heard in Philadelphia. Perhaps guided by some undirected memory it took on a known melody, and as it moved through her she was moved by it, letting steps learnt long ago carry her around the familiar space in measured circles. It felt liberating in an almost playful way, a frivolity the likes of which she hadn’t indulged in for a long time. God but she had forgotten how  _ wonderful _ it felt to move to music for the sheer joy of it - never mind the silliness of doing it without actual music. Slowing after a few turns she opened her eyes - and near stumbled to a startled stop.

Ben was standing in the door, mug in hand, regarding her with a small smile, the sadness of which left her fighting down a blush.

“Spying on lone women now, are you?” she scolded, her embarrassment perhaps making her tongue sharper than intended.

Ben, however, only smiled a little more pronouncedly and possibly more wistfully.

“Do you remember when you tried to teach us boys how to dance?” His gaze was far away for a moment, before he returned it to her with a slight, self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t think I’d ever seen you so frustrated.”

Anna thought she did remember, vaguely. A long winter’s evening not unlike this one.

She pointed a finger at Ben’s face.

“That’s because you were frustrating, even then.”

Ben dropped his eyes ruefully into his cup, like a concession of something with far greater weight.

The last thing Anna wanted was to cause him to slip into one of his dark moods.

“Well, come on, then,” she challenged, setting her hands on her hips.

Lifting his head, Ben immediately picked up on her challenge.

“Oh, please no,” he tried to laugh it off, shaking his head.

“Time you proved to me my frustrations weren’t entirely in vain.”

“Neither of us wants that, believe me,” he protested.

She remained unyielding.

With a sigh, Ben set his cup on a nearby table.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said as he approached her. She hated the fact that she was still unused to the sight of him in civilian dress.

They assumed position - a little more familiar than was perhaps strictly proper, but then, they  _ had  _ grown up together - and set off, albeit at a little more sedate a pace. Anna had had enough  _ propriety  _ to last her a lifetime.

Instead of pulling Ben out of his subdued humour, she seemed to be getting pulled in.

“You looked happy.”

Ben’s unexpected words made Anna look at him.

“Just then,” he continued, tilting his head, as if they had left the past moment behind them in space as well as time.

Under her stare, Ben started to fumble.

“Not that - I mean…I just mean…” He broke off, collecting himself. “I’m glad, truly. You deserve it.”

He said it with that earnest sincerity that was hard to bear sometimes; he laid himself open so artlessly it felt like you were being laid open in turn. Anna had to look away and felt, to her mortification, tears stinging in her eyes. It wasn’t that she thought of herself as undeserving of happiness; it just hadn’t seemed like a possibility.

Ben, to his credit, allowed her the space for her reaction.

Focussing on the steps helped her gather herself, and she felt a little steadier when she met Ben’s eyes again, conveying all the sincerity she could in her own voice.

“Thank you for saying that. So do you,” she insisted, because she knew him and his self-denying tendencies.

As if on cue, Caleb burst through the door, Abe and Townsend in tow.

“Oi, you starting without us?”

“If I had known this affair would involve dancing, I would have come up with a convenient excuse,” Robert put in drily. Anna was suffused by a wave of warmth at the fact that she knew him well enough by now to know he wasn’t being serious.

From there, the evening proceeded rather more raucously. Caleb, perched on a table, struck up a song to accompany them that was nowhere near an appropriate measure, and with words so inappropriate they made Ben blush. Abe kept badgering him about it until Caleb dragged him, quite literally, onto their impromptu dance floor. Their initially surprisingly passable steps soon devolved into out-right tussling. When Ben decided to intervene, with limited success, Anna dropped into a chair at the table Robert was occupying, helping herself to Caleb’s abandoned wine.

“Remind me again why we’re friends with this lot,” Robert asked of her, watching the scuffle with an almost convincing air of disdain.

Anna eyed the three grown men, veterans of so many terrible things, looking in very real danger of ending up in an undignified sprawl on the hardwood floor over the rim of her cup.

“Wouldn’t want life to get too quiet, now, would you?”


End file.
